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A stage is set in an auditorium. In a formal concert, Tom, a piano virtuoso, is giving a piano recital of "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" by Franz Liszt. Jerry, who is sleeping inside the piano, is rudely awakened by the hammers, then sits on top of the piano to mock the cat by "conducting" him. Tom flicks Jerry off the piano. Tom continues playing without any interruptions.

Jerry arises from under one of the keys. Tom plays tremolo on this key, knocking Jerry on the head, and then Jerry runs back and forth underneath. Tom smashes the mouse under the keys, plays the main theme of the rhapsody, and when Tom lifts his two fingers from playing a trill, the piano continues playing. He looks over the edge of the piano and spots Jerry playing the felts from inside. To quiet him, he whacks Jerry with a tuning tool. Jerry slams the piano lid onto Tom's fingers. Tom still plays, and then Jerry pops out on the far right of the piano to attempt to cut Tom's finger with a pair of scissors as he plays a note from the very highest minor third of the piano. After the sixth miss, Jerry pants from this effort, and then substitutes a mousetrap for the white keys just below it. Tom plays the keys on either side for a few seconds but eventually, Tom's finger gets caught in the trap.

Jerry prances up and down on the piano, upon which Tom climbs and proceeds to play with his feet. As Tom gets back down to play with his fingers, Jerry dances around on the felts, momentarily changing the tune from the rhapsody to "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe". Tom then plays a chord where the mouse is bounced repeatedly, receiving rude gestures in return, and eventually catches the mouse and stows him into the piano stool. Jerry then crawls out of an opening and manipulates the seat's controls, cranking it up, and sending it crashing down, causing Tom to get his head covered in his clothes and then land on the keys.

Tom stuffs Jerry into the felts and then goes crazy on the piano, going back to the rhapsody. The felts take on a life of their own, bashing Jerry about, spanking him, and squashing him to and throw. Eventually, Jerry gets squashed and comes out, very angry about this, and then breaks off some felts as his sticks and plays the finale of the rhapsody in one last retaliation. Jerry constantly increases the speed of his playing, plays two false endings, and generally taunts him, such that Tom is left with raggedy clothes and collapses at the end of the tune. The audience then applauds for the performance, and Jerry takes the praise for himself by bowing to the audience as a spotlight shines on him.

The same year MGM produced The Cat Concerto, Warner Bros. released a very similar Bugs Bunny cartoon called Rhapsody Rabbit, directed by Friz Freleng, with Bugs against an unnamed mouse. Both shorts used near identical gags, the same piece by Franz Liszt, and had similar endings.[2] Both MGM and Warner Bros. accused each other of plagiarism, after both films were submitted for the 1947 Academy Awards ceremony.[3] Technicolor was accused of sending a print of either cartoon to the competing studio, who then allegedly plagiarized their rival's work.[4] This remains uncertain even today, though Rhapsody Rabbit has an earlier MPAA copyright number and release date while The Cat Concerto had a more advanced production number at #165 while all the other shorts released near the same period had a lower production number in the 150's range.[4] By pure coincidence, as of 1997 both shorts are under ownership of Turner Entertainment and Warner Bros. (Both were part of the pre-1986 MGM library, and Rhapsody Rabbit being part of it via sales to Associated Artists Productions and its successor companies). The controversy was made into an episode of the Cartoon Network anthology series ToonHeads.[5]

The Cat Concerto, a section of Nicola Watts' "Cartoons and Music" 1997 Multimedia Analysis and Design project at the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) at the University of Glasgow.